Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Greymouth - Franz Joseph with Lisa
Thursday 7th January
Caught the bus at 8am to Franz Josef, there was a weather warning that the road might be closed due to flooding. Luckily, even though it rained a lot and there were many puddles to splash through, we made it to Franz Josef on time. Along the way we stopped at Hokitika to go to the supermarket and buy supplies for our two nights in FJ, a gold mining town called Ross where you could pan for gold, but none of us did, and finally we stopped at the bushman's café where we had an expensive bacon and cheese toasty in the Westland National Park. We stayed at Montrose Backpackers which is really clean but there are no plug sockets in the rooms. After we had checked into our 5 bed dorm we wandered to the Glacier hike office to pay for our trip. We then bought some fruit from the four square and had a look in the two souvenir shops. These buildings pretty much make up the town, apart from half a dozen café/restaurants, accommodation and glacier tour operators. After our wandering we went back to the hostel and Lyndsey I had an afternoon nap (I'm turning into an old woman) while Gareth watched a film in the TV room with Jennie S and Alison. At around 6pm it was time to start cooking our exciting dinner, bangers and mash!! Alison and Jennie S pealed the potatoes. The meal was excellent, we even had onion gravy. After dinner we started watching quadraphinia while Gareth and I ate our peaches but no one was really getting into in (apart from Lyndsey and Jennie S) so we switched to Trainspotting which pulled a good viewing crowd. During the beginning of the film I made everybody's sandwiches for our Glacier Hike tomorrow, there was a lot of bread; anyone watching me must have thought I was very hungry. When Trainspotting had finished we sorted out our bags for tomorrow and then got ready for bed.
Friday 8th January
Exciting day today!! We had breakfast and walked the short distance to the glacier walk office. We were given a lanyard with four different coloured plastic cards on it. We had to sign in then exchange three of our cards for, trousers, boots, crampons, socks, hat, gloves and a jacket. Our fourth card had our number on it. We then had out last 'real toilet' trip before getting on the bus to drive the 10 minutes to the bottom of the glacier. When we got to the car park we had a 10 minute walk through rainforest and after a debate as to who was going to be in which group, a final 35 minute walk across rocks and through steams to the foot of the glacier. The sight was amazing. Dan, our guide who was half Maori, pointed to where our high point on the glacier would be, it looked very far away! We climbed over the yellow rope fence which the point normal public are not allowed to pass and put our crampons on. After a quicker discussion to split our group of 22 into two groups of 11 we set of up the glacier. Our first trial was to navigate an almost vertical ladder that was resting against the side of a rock. After this it was up some steep ice steps, then over some more rocky areas before we hit the really big ice cube. It was freezing, then warm, then freezing. Our bodies couldn't adjust. Our first crevice was the easiest as it wasn't as narrow at the ones to come, it was fairly long though and we got some good pictures. While every one else walked around the corner of the ice wall that was in our way, Dan decided we would go through it!! It was a lot of fun. First you had to duck through a hole in the ice and then squeeze yourself through a very narrow crevice and then walk up some ice steps to get out of the crevice. The next crevice went slightly down hill but still very narrow and at one part you just slid along, it was really fun. As we came to the end of our icy decent we came across an ice cave that you could wander into and get your picture taken. I had to go for a toilet break at this point, interesting. Dan told us if we all sang a song he would to a Hakka for us before we got on the bus. We sang 'Yellow Submarine'. So when we got back to the car park he performed a Hakka. That evening we found a fish and chip shop on the back street where we bought our dinner.
- comments